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Failing Radeon 9800 Pro

S

Stugots

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Feb 25, 2004
Messages
7,301
Two nights ago I turned on my system just to do some random shit, and after about 10-15 minutes of running the display inside of windows started to become corrupted. There is pink/red strips going down the entire length of the screen. Thinking this was just a windows problem, i rebooted and found that even the intel logo in my bios was being distorted. I went into the bios and everything looked fine, but anything graphical is messed up. I let the computer cool down for a few hours and tried it again, it started fine then 10-15 minutes later it happened again.

The card is a Sapphire ATI Radeon 9800Pro, 256mb DDR2, R350. It has the stock passive heatsink on the memory, and the gpu cooler was replaced with a waterblock for my watercooler. Here is a link to what my exact card looks like.

http://www.itsum.com/news/31255.html

As you can see the heatsinks on the ram looks a little poor. There are later revisions of this card where they are replaced with larger individual heatsinks on the ram.

http://www.clubic.com/photo/0226000000057911.jpg

I believe that my problem may be the ram overheating, but i dont understand why i havent had this problem in the past and why now it is becoming a problem. I have gamed perfectly fine.
 
My Sapphire 9800pro went out on my last saturday. I had it for 10 months. THe stock cooler started making a bad whining sound after 8, so I replaced the stock cooler (eventually) with an Arctic cooler. After testing, it seemed to be alright. Then last sunday, while playing Rome, it took a dump on me. The cooler had been installed for 3 weeks.

Mine was a 128meg version, with no ram heatsinks.
 
ok...ive come to the conclusion that i need to rma it. but where the hell is sapphire's rma section on their webpage???
 
acascianelli said:
ok...ive come to the conclusion that i need to rma it. but where the hell is sapphire's rma section on their webpage???
Click to expand...


Oh god, cue the morally uptight to bitch that hes RMAing it after modifying the card with a non-stock cooler.
 
Komataguri said:
Oh god, cue the morally uptight to bitch that hes RMAing it after modifying the card with a non-stock cooler.
Click to expand...

Well, I'm going to put the stock cooler back on before I send it in. :D
 
acascianelli said:
Well, I'm going to put the stock cooler back on before I send it in. :D
Click to expand...


better go out and buy a fire protective suit. heats gonna be turned up high in this thread.
 
And tell them to piss off; its his card, he can do whatever the hell he wants with it. Its Sapphire's decision anway, I thougth we already went through this?

You might want to try the reseller you got it from first though, good luck man :cool:
 
I bought it refurbished of Newegg, it only had a 15 day warrenty. I'm allready in contact with Sapphire's tech support to get this worked out.
 
I cleaned all the dust out of my case, and upped the agp voltage to 1.6v and now it seems to be running fine.

Update: Still fucked up, so im sending it back
 
Yah, usually if you see something as bad as that, it usually means the component is on the way out :eek: . Good luck with the RMA
 
i set the agp voltage to 1.6v and it seems to made it alittle more stable. its still active flakey tho.
 
Its getting worse by the day, now its to the point where its preventing windows from booting. Today im going to pull the card out and put the original heatsink on it
 
As long as you don't fuck up the card installing it, what's the moral issue with installing non-stock cooling on a card you bought? That's like invalidating my engine's powertrain warranty because I had a bigger radiator and flex fan installed.
 
same happened to me, I RMAed it and got a bad RMA, so thats being RMAed again so I bought a 6800 instead...
 
God, my 9800 pro makes that whining noise, and I think the buzzing in my case is the fan dying, but I can't pinpoint the exact source of the buzzing noise because even with my panel off, it eludes my ears, but it's very noticeable on a water cooled rig which is otherwise, almost silent. What are the odd's it's my 9800 pro showing early signs of death?
 
As much as I'd like to go buy a 6800gt with the koolance waterblock for it, i dont have that kind of money right now. I'll work with Sapphire, and if they won't RMA my card I might end up shelling out the money for the 6800gt.

Well, now im 2 for 2 with bad refurb hardware from newegg. I bought my IC7-G refurbished, that had a bad gigabit onboard lan, now the graphics card also purchased refurbished is going.
 
I've had to RMA my 9800 twice. Legit reasons. It worries me though, what if this fails again. Do you guys hear a lot of 9800's failing? I've considered selling the card i just got back on ebay or something.
 
I have had my ATI Radeon 9800 128 meg for 2 years. I got it when it came out because I worked at circuit city. Bought it new for $330 with my discount. Man after 2 years, this card is still awesome and is selling for 175-200.
 
would you guys recommend changing out the stock 9800pro cooling for an aftermarket cooler to extend the lifetime of the card, or prevent any failures?
 
heliotrope, while it could be a coincidence that you've had two failures, it may not be. Check out your motherboard and your PSU, and make sure both are running it in specs. Sometimes a faulty component can short out others without killing itself.

EDIT: Just noticed you had a shuttle. Check the card's operation temp (put your finger on the heatsink). If its too hot, over a long time that might harm it without causing immediate artifacts. Also, shuttle PC's dont have large PSU's, use a utility to check your voltages under load and make sure they arent low.
 
that's a good suggestion Mr. K6. But, my first failure occured in a regular mid-tower computer, one that had a good 400W power supply. My second 9800 failure occured shortly after I had put it in my shuttle, but to be honest, it had been showing problems of failure gradually in the aforementioned desktop.

but it is true that the card runs hotter in my shuttle.
 
btw, im running an antec truepower 480w, and all my voltages look good.
 
well, they allowed me to RMA the card. They told me theres a 3 week turnaround period for RMA's, and they charged me $15.00. I am very disappointed with Sapphire's support. I should have bought a BFG. :(

Maybe they'll send me a ddr1 256mb 9800 instead of a ddr2 one, that way I'll be able to mod it to an XT :D
 
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